Supreme Court Halts Recount

Election 2000

Nation's Top Jurists Take Case

December 10, 2000|By Roger Roy of The Sentinel Staff

A deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court halted Florida's ballot recount almost before it began Saturday, setting the stage for what could be the final week in the nation's monthlong presidential election drama.

In a devastating blow to Vice President Al Gore, the high court blocked hand recounts just a day after a split decision from the Florida Supreme Court ordered the counts to begin -- and even as they were gaining him precious votes.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in the appeal filed by Texas Gov. George W. Bush to stop the recount.

The high court's 5-4 ruling revealed the justices are as bitterly divided as the rest of the nation over how to resolve an election on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

In a rare separate statement for the court's majority, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether the votes being recounted in Florida were "legally cast," and noted: "the issuance of the stay suggests that a majority of the Court . . . believe that the petitioner [Bush] has a substantial probability of success."

In a scathing dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens countered that "preventing the recount from being completed will inevitably cast a cloud on the legitimacy of the election."

Saturday's recount had begun under a cloud of its own, with near chaos in some counties as elections officials debated how they should proceed.

The Florida high court, in its stunning Friday afternoon decision, revived Gore's flagging hopes with a 4-3 ruling. Overturning a trial court's verdict that rejected Gore's contest of the election, the Florida Supreme Court ordered an unprecedented hand recount of an estimated 45,000 ballots statewide.

Those ballots, known as "undervotes," recorded no votes when counted by machine after the Nov. 7 election. But many later were found to contain votes -- often disputed -- that included the infamous "hanging chads" in counties that use punch-card ballots.

Elections officials in many counties complained Saturday morning they were given too little direction by the court about how to proceed or which votes to count. And some said there was not enough time to meet the court's deadline of 2 p.m. today.

But in other counties, the recount was orderly, perhaps none more so than in Leon County, in the state's capital.

In a Tallahassee library, eight Leon County judges began counting 9,000 Miami-Dade County ballots that were trucked to the capital at the start of the election contest that led to Friday's Florida Supreme Court ruling.

Gore's campaign claimed the aborted counts -- which had tallied only a fraction of the ballots set to be counted -- already had yielded Gore a net gain of 58 votes

In its ruling Friday, the Florida Supreme Court awarded Gore previously hand-counted votes from Miami-Dade and Palm Beach that cut Bush's lead to a scant 154 votes.

That meant Saturday's partial counts would have cut the lead held by Bush to fewer than 100 votes, out of more than 6 million cast in Florida.

Predictably, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling prompted exactly the opposite reaction from the campaigns as Friday's Florida Supreme Court ruling.

"Of course we are pleased," said former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, Bush's chief legal operative in Florida. "I really think it's sad that we seem to be deciding a national election for president of the United States . . . in lawsuits and in courthouses, after the election outcome has been certified."

"We are disappointed that the vote has been stopped because real progress was being made," said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane.

Gore's gains Saturday came from mostly partial recounts in just 13 counties, including some where Republicans outnumber Democrats, said Gore legal adviser Ron Klain.

But in the Miami-Dade ballots, the hand counts seemed to be helping Bush, said Republican observer Barry Jackson.

Bush picked up 92 votes in the Miami-Dade partial tally while Gore gained just 50, Jackson said. Another 137 ballots were put into a "disputed" vote box to be hashed out later, and 3,236 were verified as having no vote cast in the presidential race, Jackson said.

In any case, the election no longer appears likely to be decided by ballot counters.

The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature will meet Monday to begin selecting its own slate of presidential electors. Those electors must convene to cast their ballots on Dec. 18.

But even the Legislature's action may be moot once the nation hears from the U.S. Supreme Court, which appears certain to render a split decision.

In its only previous ruling on the case, the nation's highest court unanimously overturned a Florida Supreme Court decision that extended the state's deadline to accept election results.

Still, the high court's earlier decision, which hinged on whether the state court based its decision on state law or the Florida Constitution, was almost toothless, essentially containing a roadmap for the Florida court to sidestep further review on that issue.